Evaluation on the integrated water resources management in China’s major cities -- Based on City Blueprint® Approach

Though with abundant water resources in China, unevenly geographical and temporal distribution of water resources have constantly resulted in many severe water issues in various cities, such as inundation, drought, urban flooding, water shortage, water pollution, and inaccessibility of safe drinking water, in addition to the negative impacts of climate change. Intensive industrialization, fast urbanization, and prompt modernization have aggravated the water conflicts between different stakeholders. Furthermore, nearly 60% of Chinese population is agglomerated in urban area to exacerbate the water stress in cities, especially in megacities. In order to evaluate the performance of the integrated water resources management (IWRM) in major cities in China, and to reveal the key obstacles and challenges to the IWRM in these cities for future improvement, the modified City Blueprint® Approach, in combining with the hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), were applied to examine the efficiency, effectiveness, and capability of the IWRM in 32 selected major cities in China, including 4 municipalities directly under the Central Government, 27 provincial capitals, and Shenzhen (a fast-emerging city located on the Pearl River Delta). The City Blueprint® Approach, consisting of three complementary frameworks, is a systematic analytic and diagnostic tool to assess the major challenges to cities (Trends and Pressures Framework, TPF), to appraise the management of urban water cycle (City Blueprint Framework, CBF), and to identify the paths of water governance improvement (Governance Capacity Framework, GCF). Significant differences have been observed between various districts and different cities. For TPF, in general, environmental pressures increase as the city scale expands, where river peak discharges and urban drainage flood are two common environmental challenges encountered by all cities. Social pressures decline and the financial pressures slightly decrease as city scale enlarged, where economic pressure and education rate are dominant indicators within each city category, respectively. For CBF, all cities have realized a great achievement in providing good basic water services, in addition to excellent performance of five indicators, drinking water quality, access to drinking water, access to sanitation, wastewater treatment, and management and action plans. In contrast, nutrient and energy recovery, public participation, and solid waste recycling, are the most crit